This review is part of the R9-290X Water Block Roundup. Bitspower is a manufacturer known mostly for it’s line of attractive fittings that come in almost every type possible. Their GPU water blocks have been around for a while but have been fairly rare in the high end scene due to price, performance and availability. In this review we’ll see if that’s still true!
Packaging is as usual nice!
Bitspower always have a very clean aesthetic which is somehow acheived in spite of their prominent branding:
There is also a nickel/plexi version if you like a different theme. The instructions are pictorial and pretty simple to follow:
The accessory bag comes with everything that is needed including spare o-rings!
The rear of the block shows great plating as well as some cooling of an IC near the VRM section that no one else has attempted to cool:
The bridge itself is fairly large but plain and simple – no LED signage here:
The VRM like every other block hops over the chokes – this has a very high flow path:
The VRM section also gets a lot of contact with the coolant which is great:
Thermal Results
For greater detail in thermal results vs flow and block restriction check out this page.
The Bitspower block was about 4C behind the leading designs for core thermal performance. While this is not disastrous it is unnecessary and disappointing given that there have been no new innnovations in core cooling for quite some years:
The VRM results on the other hand were better and given that the backplate (which we were not able to test) also includes fuji poly thermal pads to cool the VRM further, then even better VRM results would no doubt have been acheived.
The Bitspower block did lead in one category which was flow – this is the least restrictive block on the market beating even the very high flow Swiftech block.
Summary
This is an attractive block with very low restriction that is priced at the high end of the group. While it’s let down by sub par core cooling performance, it’s performance is never unacceptably bad either.
Overall- 7/10
